by Chido Nwangwu  
Founder  & Publisher   
USAfrica The Newspaper USAfricaonline.com &  
The Black Business Journal BBJonline.com  

This July 18 (and beyond), many in the progressive world will join in celebrating South Africa president Dr. Nelson Mandela's remarkable years of statesmanship, principled engagement with life and its multifarious challenges and inequities.  I feel a special interest regarding Mandela and South Africa, among other personal reasons, for having had the privilege of meeting three of the four most important historical figures who played very significant roles in that country’s transition from apartheid to a multi-racial society.  First, the remarkable former President F. W.  de  Klerk here  in Houston.  Then, the amiable Bishop Desmond Tutu.  Of course, the Mahdiba himself, Nelson Mandela, at the lawns of the beautiful and stately Tuynhuis Center and inside the South African parliament in Cape Town while I was travelling as the only African-American newspapers publisher with U.S president Bill Clinton during his March 23-April2, 1998 trip to parts of Africa. 

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born July 18, 1918 near Umtata in Transkei, in the Eastern Cape, into the royal family of the Tembu, a Xhosa-speaking ethnic group of South Africa. 

Why do we celebrate Mandela’s life? 

First, he is most famous for staring down and vanquishing the goons and racist archdeacons of separatism and economic violence that ran the evil policy of state-sponsored mayhem called  'apartheid' in his homeland. 

Second, for remaining the most relevant living person of African descent who has given impetus and cause for African-Americans to seek institutional and daily presence inside the African continent? 

Third, his moral authority derives from his selfless fortitude and enduring, exemplary sacrifices.  Raw power or the attractions of luxuries and allurement of money neither intimidate Mandela.  Little wonder when he pointedly chided President Clinton for trying to determine South Africa’s relationship with Fidel Castro’s Cuba and Muammar Ghaddafi’s Libya. 

Fourth, his example as a study in forthrightness.  A leadership whereby what you see is what you get.  Hence, it was typical Mandela, unenfeebled by age, unrestrained by arthritis, and unintimidated by the legitimate concerns and arrogations of the super-power president, to confront him head-on issues of principle.  ,  And some said  "lecture" U.S President Bill Clinton on the value of remaining steadfast with your friends, no matter how difficult other interested parties may feel.  He was speaking thankfully, to Clinton’s discomfort, in appreciation of those who supported the "anti-apartheid struggles" and the fact he will continue to trade with those countries who stood with Mandela’s African National Congress while the U.S played on both sides of the street with the so-called  "constructive engagement" policy.  Shred of all embellishments, the U.S policy, at the time, had been  "terribly soft” on apartheid -- with North Carolina’s right-wing Senator, Jesse Helms, as the latter day pro-apartheid regime’s cheerleader-in-chief in the U.S Congress.  His raucous choristers had the likes of George F. Will, Pat J. Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh, Rev. Jerry Fallwell, Pat Robertson and a confederacy of other conservatives who hemmed, hawed and distorted every turn towards a multi-racial South Africa.  Recall that Will, Buchanan & Co were misleading Americans as they disparaged the civil rights movement and others for supporting Mandela whom they foolishly and falsely labeled a "Communist!" 

It was McCarthyism let loose via the international and local U.S media.  Those fellows did not only scandalously misuse an ideological adjective by calling Mandela a  "Communist", they dramatized their subtly masked prejudices.  Why, you wonder, should the man who had fought resolutely and with dignity for equal rights under the law, for all human beings, without regard to color and creed, be stereotyped? 

Fifth, his graciousness and capacity to forgive communal sins and wickedness masquerading as government.  Until you see (or maybe read) accurate images of the inhuman conditions and psychological warfare imposed on him and his colleagues of the African National Congress, the spearheads of the anti-apartheid struggles, you may never know why Mandela’s capacity to forgive and rebuild has such global respect.  Why?  By understanding the systematized physical violence, hateful structures and organized deprivations that animated and formed the basis of apartheid, it helps make more sense why many other leaders in world consider Mandela’s statesmanship very unique and dignified. 

Hence, I am thankful that I entered and observed on March 26, 1998, the lonesome jail room where Mandela was kept for 25 painful years in the isolated Robben Island.  We toured the Island with Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Clinton’s close personal aide Bruce Lindsey, Congressional Black Caucus leader California’s Maxine Waters, Sam Donaldson of ABC News, New York Congressman Charles Rangel, BET’s Robert Johnson, Walter Isaacson, managing editor of Time magazine, Scott Pelley of CBS News, Melanie Lawson of KTRK Channel 13, Houston, and a number of others.  Therefore, for historical clarity, Mandela's stature cannot be divorced from his battles against apartheid and especially his roles as the catalyst in the birth of a new, multi-racial post-apartheid South Africa. 

Sixth, we celebrate Mandela because after four years in office and 80 years of a rugged but worthy life, Mandela has shattered a number of other ancient bogeys to smithereens.  He has made nonsense of the strings of quasi-racist mythologies and shock ill logic concocted by the George F. Wills, Pat Robertsons, Rush Limbaughs and Jesse Helms of America to create a global  'White scare' and run on the post-apartheid South African economy.  Remarkably, there were/are Blacks such as Mangosutho Buthelezi of KwaZulu (now a minister in Mandela's government of national unity) who were agents of division for the apartheid regime. 

What's Mandela’s record?  Since becoming president in the spring of 1994, contrary to the lies spread by his detractors, before and after he was elected President in that year's multi-racial election, that he was going to nationalize sliced bread and milk, Mandela economic policy has not only achieved an expansion in the percentage of growth and a broader-based industrialization, the economy has become more attractive for international capitalists.  Yet, the socio-economic profile of South Africa cannot be described as "rosy" and fully equitable.  Not quite! 

As we celebrate Mandela’s remarkable life, I recall taking time out from the 100-year-old hotel in which we were lodged in Cape Town to go into the less privileged, run-down quarters.  I saw and talked with a number of suffering blacks.  I shared some time with some homeless teenagers (five of them, aged between 8 and 19) and a few weary adults  (in their 40s and 60s).  I sought to know their assessment of President Mandela.  Their refrain: Mandela needs to do more!  They feel he is forgetting  "us.”  They all said in many ways: "We thought his presidency was going to completely and quickly improve our lives.  We’re left out.  We’re not happy...."  Translation: Idealism meets scarce resources in South Africa! 

I think those who expect Mandela to turn their lives around by the break of dawn are awakening to a certain realization that the Messiah Mandela does not make milk through incantations!  Yet, those who feel that Mandela’s government has failed to fulfil their yearnings and lofty expectations constitute a sizeable but smaller slice of millions of Black and Colored South Africans. 

While I was in South Africa, I noticed that the radical Blacks and Coloreds still see Mandela, wrongly I must add, as a dignified caretaker for the remnants of apartheid. 

On the other side, interestingly, the previous beneficiaries and yesterday’s oppressors, largely the Afrikaans, think Blacks are taking too much away, already.  For example, an Afrikaans staff of the United States Information Agency who drove me from the airport to the plot Michelangelo Hotel in Johannesburg said "We know Blacks want this and that but they have to take it easy because we, Afrikaans, feel really feel that all our privileges and positions are going away.  I commend Mandela because everyone is asking him for one thing or the other.  He is trying to be fair to all." 

This lanky, well-spoken driver who reminded me he was very "comfortable driving a Black man" (that is, my ordinary self), truly captured Mandela's dilemma and deft statesmanship in his views. 

Fact is the expansion of the relative influence of Black South Africans through their new empowering instruments of state power and private leverage since the defeat of apartheid has been very modest.  Downtown Johannesburg and Cape Town, especially the spotless Pretoria remain bastions of White/Afrikaans economic dominance. 

Regardless, there has been major progress for middle class Blacks who have unprecedented access to the bureaucracy and private capital.  They have partnerships with international organizations, too - especially African-Americans who are establishing tertiary and sub-strategic industries and community-based service businesses. 

When all is said and done, Mandela’s greatest legacy as he celebrates his 80th birthday should be that he has lived a life of fighting against the predatory, vile and boisterous mix of Anglo-Dutch, Afrikaans, Euro-Caucasian and other economic scavengers who took over through armed, brutal force, the most beautiful, gold-rich and breathtaking southerly cape of the African continent.  They could not break his will; they made peace and he leads a powerful, promising country composed of many ethnic nations.  Mandela has been governing with ill-will toward none and affirmative opportunities for all those previously locked down and locked out of South Africa’s rich resources and lands. 

Mandela, rock ribbed nationalist, visionary, exemplary icon in personal dignity, durable boxer, principled symbol for all believers in the inevitable triumph of committed democratic forces over any army/gang of tyranny and oppression in Africa and elsewhere, has become this decade’s ultimate measure for statesmanship, leadership, character and will.  To Mandela, for your humility and greatness, firm resolve and friendly, humorous dispositions, all rolled into one mythical, complicated but uniquely amiable personality, here’s an African birthday wish to you, Mahdiba: may your lineage endure another 80 million years! 

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Nwangwu, winner of the Journalism Excellence Award, HABJ 1997, serves as Founder  & Publisher of Houston-based USAfrica The Newspaper USAfricaonline.com & The Black Business Journal BBJonline.com.  He also serves as Director of Information for the 100 Black Men of America and on the board of the NAACP, Houston chapter. 
© July 15, 1998 - USAfrica Media Networks 

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